


Get Better

by kuro



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (a teeny little bit), Domestic Fluff, M/M, Pre-Slash, Sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-24
Updated: 2014-08-24
Packaged: 2018-02-14 12:37:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,298
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2192118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kuro/pseuds/kuro
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tony has a bad cough, Natasha is nice and caring if she wants to be, and Steve is not a ray of sunshine.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Get Better

**Author's Note:**

> Based on two prompts from tumblr:  
> "MCU - Tony is sick and Natasha takes care of him (and Steve hovers around being jealous of Natasha because she gets to take care of him)."  
> and  
> "Tony has a cough and the team thinks he’s being a wimp about it. But the thing is, it’s hurting the reactor area of his chest so very badly."

Tony kept trying to suppress it, but he couldn't help but cough.

“I thought idiots didn't catch colds,” Clint remarked, looking up from his breakfast bowl of brightly coloured cereals.

“Haha, funny, Clint, now shut your trap,” Tony shot back. “And if we're talking about idiots already – that would be you.”

“Yeah, I never- you ass,” Clint hissed, narrowing his eyes in a dangerous way.

“Children,” Natasha chided, calmly spreading butter on her toast. “If you make me lose my appetite, I'm going to have you two for lunch.”

The threat shut the two others right up, the silence only interrupted by another cough from Tony.

“Damn this,” he cursed quietly, grabbed his mug of coffee and vanished from the kitchen.

“Wow, someone's grumpy today,” Clint joked when Tony had left.

“That would be me, yes,” Natasha calmly stated, glaring at Clint over her toast. Clint did the sensible thing, snagged his bowl and vanished from the kitchen, as well.

* * *

 

Tony's misery was interrupted a short time later when someone knocked on the door of his bedroom. He didn't want company, he just wanted to wallow in his pain and wait until it passed, so he said nothing. To no avail, though, because the door was opened by his unsolicited guest, anyway.

“Go away, Natasha,” he coughed, waving at her as if he had the power to wave her right back out of the door.

“You should take better care of yourself,” Natasha replied calmly, taking possession of his mug of coffee and putting a tray with tea and other things on his night table instead.

“I'm taking care of myself, if you can't see that,” Tony hissed. “I'm in my bed and everything.”

“Yes,” Natasha started, “but you know you have to be careful, and-”

“Don't tell the others about it,” Tony begged, placing a hand over his arc reactor. “It's embarrassing enough as it is, to be taken out of commission by a cold. And don't, under any circumstances, tell Cap, he's gonna go into motherhenning mode.”

“Well,” Natasha smirked, sitting down on Tony's bed. “I guess you have to suffer my gentle care, then.”

Tony couldn't help but grin at that.

* * *

 

“Hey, where's Nat?” Sam asked when he and Steve came back in the afternoon. Only Thor and Clint were currently hanging out in the living room, trying to beat the shit out of each other via virtual game console. Bruce was on a trip, so he wasn't around. (Nobody ever asked where Tony was, because the answer, usually, was 'in the workshop'.)

“Ah, she's taking care of an apparently sick Tony,” Clint explained absent-mindedly, trying not to lose against Thor. “He's being a drama queen, if you ask me. Oh, and Steve, she told me that you should keep your nose out of it, or she will cut it off.”

Steve stopped where he had been trying to sneak out of the room and turned around, pout very visible on his face.

“I don't think she worded it like that,” he grumbled.

“She may or may have not, but the meaning of her words was the same anyway,” Clint grinned, beating Thor on his virtual head. Thor retaliated mercilessly.

* * *

 

Sam joined Clint and Thor on the console after a while, and the three started a kind of tournament where the aim wasn't just beating each other up, but doing it as elaborately and artfully as possible. (Tony's software tweaks definitely helped with that.)

Steve, on the other hand, opted out and wandered around like a pathetic ghost that couldn't rest in the afterlife. One of his teammates was sick, and he needed to know if he was okay, but Natasha had told him to leave them alone, and he couldn't help but... no, he most definitely wasn't jealous. At all. About the fact that Tony would rather prefer to have Natasha around him than Steve. Not that Natasha wasn't great. Because she was. But...

Natasha came out of Tony's room with a tray in her hands and lifted an eyebrow when she saw him moping around in the hallway.

“Steve, you are, frankly, pathetic,” Natasha teased with a small smile. “But he's asleep right now, so I guess you can go in for a moment.”

“I...” Steve tried to deny, but Natasha didn't even listen to him and vanished down the hallway. For a moment, Steve stood in the hallway, trying to tell himself that he wasn't going to go in. But then he stopped pretending, because who was he kidding, of course he would check up on Tony.

He quietly stepped into Tony's bedroom, feeling a little guilty at the intrusion of Tony's privacy, but he just wanted to check on him for a second. Make sure his teammate was okay. See if he needed something.

Tony was lying on his bed, seemingly dead to the world. He didn't look too bad, though. Steve was a little relieved, his mind had already started to bring up all kinds of horror scenarios.

He stood next to the bed for a minute, staring down at Tony, telling himself that he really should leave. That it was rude and creepy to stare down at people when they were asleep. That he ahd done is duty, checked up on him, and everything had turned out to be okay. Instead, he kept standing right where he was and stared.

( ~~Tony definitely wasn't really nice to look at, no sir.~~ )

“Hey Steve, it's kind of creepy when you do that,” Tony suddenly mumbled, eyes still closed. “But I should've known, you are a motherhen and even Natasha is weak against your pouty face.”

He opened his eyes and smiled up at Steve.

“I'm okay, really,” Tony assured him. “It's just a cough.”

As if to emphasize that, he started coughing, and to Steve, it didn't sound particularly good. It did, in fact, sound very bad.

“Tony, you don't have problems with your lungs, do you?” he asked.

Tony only laughed at that, tapping on his arc reactor twice.

“Well, what do you think?” Tony asked him sarcastically. Then saw Steve's face and sobered up immediately. “No Steve. I know that face, it's the 'I know I can't do anything about it but I'm going to try anyway' face. You are not responsible for this, Steve, and it's not in your responsibility to do something about it. I'm fine, or I will be fine, so don't you worry your pretty head.”

Steve huffed at that last part. He would have loved to argue about the former part, though. But while he was stubborn (yes, he had been told enough times, thank you), he knew when he had to let something go. He didn't like letting go things at all, to be honest. But over time, he had gotten a good feel of when Tony was up for a discussion, and when it would just lead to an impasse where they would only bray at each other like two stubborn old donkeys.

“Just... tell me when you need something, and don't hide it from us when you're not doing well,” Steve demanded. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Tony meekly agreed. Then he reached out for Steve's hand and squeezed it for a second. “You're a good guy, Steve, I know that. You don't have to feel responsible for everything, you hear me?”

“Yes,” Steve answered, managing a smile before he left the room. “Rest well.”

Outside the door, Steve stalled for a second, considering returning to the living room and joining the others. Then he turned towards his room, closed the door behind himself and locked it.

The tears just kind of started falling on their own.

_You're a good guy_ , Tony had said. 

He couldn't help feeling that he needed to be better. 


End file.
